MarketingSherpa's Email Marketing FAQs! | iContact

Q. We've seen unsubscribe rates of 25%+. How do you lessen this? – Sandra

Ouch. I’m sure that hurts Sandra, and I’m sorry to hear that.

Without knowing the exact details of your email list and your email sends, my best guess is that there is a disconnect between what people expect when they sign-up for your email list, and what they are receiving.

Take a look at how you sign people up for your email list. What value are you promising? What timing are you implying?

Then, take a good hard look at your email program. Are you delivering on that promised value at the implied frequency? If not, you should either change how you present your email list when people register, or how you enact your email campaigns to align the promised value and timing with the received value and timing.

In addition, some email service providers allow you to ask questions when people unsubscribe from your list about why they unsubscribed. This data will never be perfect, but can give you an indication of some areas to dig into a little more.

Q. I use an RSS aggregator to monitor industry blogs for content ideas. It's very helpful. – Joanne

While not technically a question, I thought this was helpful advice from Joanne. On the webinar, we talked about places to look for content ideas for your email marketing. In addition to RSS aggregators, a few more ideas include:

Q. Hey guys, I work for a retail company and I feel like my customers are tired of “product heavy” newsletters, any other ideas how I can freshen up the content? Thanks – Max

It sounds like you have an audience that is ripe for some content marketing Max. Every product or service sold by every company really only does one of two things:

Solve a pain point

Help achieve a goal

An example of solving a pain point might be that someone has back pain and is looking for ways to relieve it. Or in a B2B setting, a company has had security breaches, and the CIO must stop them.

An example of achieving a goal might be, for example, it’s a beautiful sunny day outside my office in Jacksonville Beach right now. I would love to have a convertible to tool around in. Or in a B2B setting, a company might have a goal of international expansion.

Now, while your product helps solve these pain points or achieve these goals, your content marketing, including email newsletters, should as well. For example, if you are a yoga instructor offering classes that helps relieve back pain…

Your content marketing could be an email newsletter and blog with examples of effective exercises